


Kindle in Us the Fire

by St_Salieri



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, F/M, Minor Character Death, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-22
Updated: 2006-10-22
Packaged: 2017-11-25 07:40:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/636642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/St_Salieri/pseuds/St_Salieri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three moments from the life of Buffy and Spike.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The quotes at the beginning of each section (and at the end of the last) are taken from Edna St. Vincent Millay's ["Renascence"](http://www.everypoet.com/Archive/poetry/Edna_St_Vincent_Millay/edna_st_vincent_millay_renascence.htm), which I highly recommend.

 

_All I could see from where I stood  
Was three long mountains and a wood_

October, 2006  
Hallstatt, Austria

 

 

The pavement flew under Buffy's feet, the cool night wind whipping her hair about her face and stealing her breath. She could feel the stitch in her side worsening, so she swallowed hard and pushed forward with a grimace. A narrow stairway loomed before her, disappearing into the dark space between two buildings. She took the stairs two at a time, leaping fleet-footed from one to the next and rounding the corners without so much as touching the handrail for balance. She had no time to lose; every second was precious. Clutching her knife tighter in her fist, she took one last deep breath and burst onto the dark landing at the top of the stairs.

Spike was there, leaning against one of the buildings with a satisfied smirk on his face.

"Hello there, Slayer. What took you so long?"

Buffy gave him the evil eye, bending down to rest her hands on her knees and catch her breath. "There were people," she said defensively. "I couldn't just go plowing through the tourists. There's this thing called subtlety?"

Spike shrugged carelessly. "Never had much use for it myself. I take it you didn't see the Droog?"

Buffy shook her head. "You?"

"Not a glimpse."

They'd been tracking the Droog demon for almost a week now, ever since the local coven had detected a powerful shift in the magical forces that kept the dimensions intact. It could be nothing, but...in Buffy's experience, nothing good ever came of magical shiftiness. Better to be safe than sorry, and a Droog sighting this close to Halloween gave her a bad feeling.

"So," Spike drawled. "You'll notice I won."

Buffy coughed and straightened up, stretching her calves. "Whatever."

"Fair's fair, Slayer. You'll be paying me later." He pursed his lips and gave her a quick up-and-down look. "If you're up for it, that is. What's the matter? A little out of conditioning?"

She glared at him defensively. "No! And it's the Droog's fault. Why did it have to come to such a mountainy place anyway? Besides, you lose all right to criticize my cardio routine when you don't have to breathe, mister." Sheathing her knife, she stepped up close to him and tucked one finger into the waistband of his jeans. He immediately straightened up, his eyes dilating and his mouth dropping open slightly.

Buffy hid a grin. He was so easy.

"Now, Spike," she purred, tilting her head up and letting her warm breath wash across his face. "Are you doubting my...stamina? If you'd like, I can give you a taste of your reward right now." She reached down and ran her fingers lightly across the front of his jeans, barely touching him. He gave a jolt as if struck by lightning, and she rewarded him with a soft squeeze. She dropped a kiss on his Adam's apple and squeezed him again, starting to knead gently. Just as Spike groaned and reached for her, she stepped back with an apologetic smile. "I'm so sorry," she said sweetly at Spike's pained look, looking over her shoulder toward the darkened stairwell. "It looks like we have visitors. I'll have to discuss this with you later."

Buffy had timed it perfectly. As soon as she was finished speaking, two girls came plodding up the stairs, panting for breath and dragging their swords behind them. They were both Slayers -- Hannah fourteen, Grace sixteen -- and had been assigned to accompany Buffy on what everyone was hoping was just another ordinary search and destroy mission.

"Hi, girls!" she chirped, ignoring Spike's baleful glare. It served him right for being so smug. "Everyone ready to move on? We should probably head up the mountain and check the salt mines on more time."

Hannah and Grace both groaned and slid down to rest on the floor. "Do we have to?" Hannah asked plaintively. "Maybe it's gone to sleep for the night."

There was a sudden scream from the nearby road. The girls jumped to their feet and grabbed their swords. "Maybe not," Buffy muttered. "Come on, follow me!"

She led the group through a narrow alley and came out upon one of the streets at the upper end of the town. The moon's pale glow illuminated the entire area, its reflection shimmering in the dark lake that lay at the foot of the mountains. Up among the houses and away from the shops and restaurants, the town was much quieter -- except for the sound of a woman shrieking. The woman in question came tearing down the road, hiccuping for breath, and almost slammed directly into Buffy.

"I think we've located our Droog," Spike muttered.

" _Beinhaus_ ," the woman stuttered, pointing back behind her. " _Das beinhaus!_ " Taking one look at the knives and swords the group carried, she shrieked again and took off down the road.

"What's a _beinhaus_?" Buffy asked as the woman disappeared around a corner, her screams dying away into the distance. "Is that our demon?"

"Charnel house," Spike answered absently, sniffing the air. "Bonehouse, literally." He frowned when he realized that Buffy was staring at him. "What?"

"I thought you couldn't speak German."

He shrugged. "Did a little traveling back in my day. Didn't bother to learn much more than the important words, though: bone, blood, death, kill, fight, drink...." He broke off and glanced over at Grace and Hannah, who were looking a little green. "Yeah. Never mind."

Following the road the woman had come down led them to a small church, a graveyard nestled into one corner. Buffy wove her way through the crowded markers with their carved crucifixes -- so different from the cemeteries she had practically grown up in, with their wide paths and broad headstones. At one end of the graveyard was a tiny chapel. Grace nudged her and pointed to a nearby sign. Yup, _das beinhaus_.

"I can't see the Droog," Spike muttered.

"Yeah, but it's here somewhere," Buffy said, nodding towards the chapel door which swung open gently in the breeze. She led the group quietly toward the tiny chapel, easing the door wide open and stepping inside. "Whoa," she breathed.

The entire room was filled with bones. Long tables encircled the room, every available surface lined with skulls. Skulls lay stacked tall in the corners, their empty eye socket staring out blankly in a parody of attention. The spaces beneath the tables were filled with neatly arranged rows of what looked like femurs and ulnae and every other piece of skeletonry imaginable. Buffy took a step closer and noticed that what she had originally taken for dirt on the bones was actually painting. The skulls had been decorated -- some with garlands of greenery and wreaths of painted flowers, others with a simple cross and the names and dates of the original owners. A few candles had been lit here and there, but otherwise the room didn't seem to have been disturbed. Yet.

"It says they buried them in the graveyard for a few years," Hannah whispered, reading from a brochure that she must have picked up at the door. There was probably no need for silence at this point, but the atmosphere seemed to call for it. "But there wasn't a lot of room there, so they dug them up and bleached the bones and put them all in here. They've been doing that for hundreds of years."

"Gross," Buffy muttered absently, studying the skull of one Mr. Josef Klein, then cleared her throat and straightened up. "I mean...neat! Because this is an important cultural monument which we should all respect, and I'm sure Giles will want you to do a report on it when we get back." Hannah and Grace exchanged amused glances, and Buffy wilted. She was officially the suckiest role model ever.

"Do me a favor," she said under her breath to Spike. "Make sure this _never_ happens to me. Once I'm in the ground, I'm staying there." Spike winced slightly, and Buffy squeezed her eyes shut. "Sorry," she muttered. "I didn't mean..."

"Later," Spike said briskly, and Buffy opened her eyes to see the Droog step through the chapel door. It wasn't large -- only a bit over five feet -- but it looked almost as wide as it was tall. Its squat body supported a large head with double rows of teeth and an oversized pair of arms that almost dragged on the floor. Not particularly pretty, as far as demons went, but no big surprises either. In fact, Buffy was tempted to draw the thing outside and let the two girls get in a bit of target practice. She knew what it would mean to them to go home with an actual kill under their belts. Buffy raised her knife, about to rush the Droog, when it held up what looked like a large silver coin and began to chant.

Okay, that was new.

"What's it doing?" Grace asked nervously, then gave a small shriek when the skull on the table next to her jumped. She and Hannah edged towards the center of the room, swords held aloft. Buffy watched in horror as all of the bones began to rattle and shake. As the chanting grew louder, the leg bones slid from their places under the tables and stood upright, quickly joined by ribs and arms. Buffy gripped her knife tightly, watching the bones pull themselves together into complete skeletons -- pelvises, toes, spines, fingers. As a last step, each of the skeletons reached towards the tabletops and grabbed a skull, fitting it into place at the top of the neck. _The head bone's connected to the neck bone,_ ran through Buffy's head, and she bit back a hysterical giggle. The chanting stopped.

The only thing that could make the entire thing more creepy was if someone started playing _Night on Bald Mountain_.

"Okay," Buffy said slowly. "What's with the science project?" She turned to face the Droog, who gestured proudly to the skeletons.

"Army!"

"Not much of an army," Spike scoffed, giving one of the skeletons a once-over. "Don't look to steady, these ones."

The Droog shrugged. "Practice," it said. "For apocalypse! Next Tuesday."

"Oh, God," Buffy groaned. "Another one? And I just got finished replacing my wardrobe." Turning to Hannah and Grace, she swung her knife casually. "Come on, girls. What do you say we clean house?"

Even outnumbered as they were, it was an easy fight. The practice army, though creepy beyond the telling of it, didn't have much in the way of weaponry, and they pretty much fell apart when you hit them hard enough. Bones flew through the air and crashed against the far walls, skulls rolled across the floor and tripped up friend and foe alike. Buffy grunted and pulled the head off one of the skeletons. "Sorry, Josef," she muttered, placing the skull back gently onto the table before jumping back into the fray.

"No fair!" the Droog wailed, surveying the messy piles of scattered bones. A few of the separated pieces were still moving feebly, but most of them had stopped. "You broke my army!"

"Yeah, sorry about that," Buffy apologized cheerfully. "That's kind of my job." Catching Spike's eye, they made a coordinated leap and caught the Droog by its squat shoulders. Lifting it up, they gave it a shake until its teeth rattled and it dropped the silver coin. Hannah picked it up and pocketed it, and the Droog wailed in despair.

"Oh, stop with the crying," Spike said in disgust. "Honestly, the big bads these days are getting downright pathetic."

The Droog gave a sharp twist and managed to squirm free, running out the door more quickly than seemed possible for its shape.

"Let it go," Buffy said heavily. "We've got work to do here." She gestured to the bones that were scattered around the chapel. Spike was staring at her with a _you've got to be kidding me_ look on his face, and Buffy elbowed him in the ribs.

"What?" he said defensively, nodding towards the girls. "That's what the next generation is for." He held up for approximately ten seconds, then wilted under Buffy's glare. "Fine," he sulked, picking up a skull, only perking up slightly when Buffy whispered the word _reward_ in his ear.

The clean-up took far longer than the actual battle, which was depressing. By the time they had the bones and skulls replaced as neatly as they could, it was already edging towards dawn. Buffy shooed Hannah and Grace outside and closed the chapel door after taking one last lingering glance inside.

"You alright?" Spike asked softly, laying his hand over hers.

"Yeah," she said. "It's just...I couldn't leave them like that. They didn't ask for that -- for their bodies to be brought back to life and used that way. They deserve to rest."

Spike slung an arm about her shoulder and squeezed, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "Well, you know what they say," he mused, caressing her backside before giving a sharp pinch. "No rest for the wicked, eh?"

Buffy gave him a sideways glance and reached out for a pinch of her own, avoiding his grabby hands. "Sorry," she said with a grin. "You'll have to catch me first. I demand a rematch." And without another word she took off down the street after Hannah and Grace, followed closely by a laughing Spike.

They left the graveyard behind them.


	2. Chapter 2

 

_I turned and looked another way,  
And saw three islands in a bay._

May, 2012  
Upolu Island, Samoa

 

He watched her from the shadows, careful to stay far enough back that she couldn't sense his presence.

Not that he was trying to avoid her, exactly. It simply wasn't safe enough for him to venture any closer until the sun went down.

Spike brushed aside a palm leaf and crouched a bit deeper into the shade, flinching slightly as a stray sunbeam made its was through the overhead foliage and struck his hand. He'd been there since early morning, watching and waiting, unable to move closer and unwilling to attract her attention yet.

Buffy rose, leaving her blanket on the white sands of the beach, and walked slowly into the water. She stood there a moment and stared out into the ocean, the waves lapping at her thighs, and then dove gracefully below the surface of the water. By the time she surfaced, she was about twenty meters from the shore. Spike sighed and settled back, squinting at the sun and trying to determine exactly when it would set. In the meantime, he looked his fill.

He hadn't seen Buffy in several months, not since the battle against the rogue vampire clan that had set itself up at the Hellmouth in Cleveland. He and Buffy had fought about...something, just one of their typical arguments. Spike would be damned if he could even remember exactly what it had been about. The worst part was that they hadn't been able to reconcile before the battle started. The two of them had been separated, and after the fire, Spike had been trapped underground by a massive cave-in that had brought down half a city block. He'd spent the next three days trying to dig himself out, getting hungrier and hungrier, until he'd finally been rescued. By the time the Watchers had managed to dig enough of the rubble out of the way that he could crawl out into the night air, he'd been ready to start chewing his own arm off. Buffy was waiting for him, and it was obvious from the bags under her eyes that she hadn't slept much while he'd been missing. Upon seeing him, she'd gasped in relief and grabbed him in a tight hug, her tears wetting the front of his shirt.

Then she'd hauled off and hit him across the face and took off running.

By the time he'd gotten back to their rented room, she was gone, along with all of her clothes. She'd left behind a brief note: _Not now._

As it had turned out, their hotel charged a fee for the holes he'd left in the walls from his fists. Spike charged it to the Council without a second thought.

It was the signature that was his saving grace: _Love, Buffy._ He knew she'd chosen that word carefully to reassure him, even if she couldn't quite deal with seeing him face to face at the moment.

It wasn't the first time they'd been separated, and he knew it wouldn't be the last, what with their volatile tempers. Still, that didn't make it any easier. Spike had given Buffy the space she'd needed, and after a couple of weeks she'd given him a call. She was in Cairo, working with a couple of the Slayers that were being trained there. They'd talked of this and that, though Spike was barely aware of what he said.

"Buffy," he'd said at the end, then trailed off, not sure how to ask without sounding pathetic.

"Soon," she'd said, and he could hear the smile in her voice. "I love you."

That's the way it had been for weeks. He hadn't asked when she would be back, and she wouldn't say. He kept track of her through her phone calls, tracing her position from afar as she wandered from country to country.

By the time he'd received her last phone call from Sydney, he'd been ready to take matters into his own hands. She was going to Samoa to take care of a sea-demon that was terrorizing the populace and disrupting the tourist industry. Without a second thought, he'd called in his favors from the Council and gotten himself a private flight to Australia on one of their necrotempered planes.

That wasn't the end of it, of course. There was the small matter of sneaking into the cargo hold of a late afternoon flight bound for Samoa, and then tracking her once he'd landed. Spike had no idea if she was even on the same island as he was, but in the end it didn't take long to find her. The stories of the warrior woman who had slain the demon were still running rampant through every village. He'd easily tracked her to a small private beach on the western shores of Upolu, arriving just before the sun rose.

He'd been watching her all day, waiting for the right moment, soaking in the sight of his girl playing in the sun. She looked so young, and it took Spike a while to realize that it was the first time in a year he'd seen her truly relax. In a way, it made the long march of the sun across the sky a little more bearable.

By the time the sun finally dipped below the horizon, Buffy had returned to her _fale_ a few dozen feet from the water's edge. Spike could see her sitting on a thin mat that had been placed on the wooden platform, the thatched roof casting deep shadows back into the jungle. Buffy was still in the cream bikini she'd been wearing all day, and Spike could see that she'd wrapped a thin sarong around her waist as well. The humid air buzzed with the chirp of insects, the water lapped gently along the shoreline, and Spike removed his boots, stepped out of the jungle and crept toward his prey.

He watched Buffy carefully, trying to see the exact moment when she finally became aware of his presence. Her attention was fixed on the ocean and the fading pinks of the setting sun, the book she'd been reading fallen to one side. Closer he came, close enough to scent her, almost close enough to reach out and touch. Just a few more steps, and...

"Hi, Spike."

Well, damn.

Defeated, he strolled around the edge of the _fale_ and sat down next to her. She wasn't looking at him, but there was a prim smile quirking the corner of her mouth.

"Oh, bloody hell. You knew I was there all along, didn't you?"

She nodded, still not taking her eyes off of the ocean. "Since about five this morning." Reaching across, she grabbed his hand and squeezed it, finally turning to give him a teary smile. "But it's nice to finally see you."

"Do you want to be alone?"

She shook her head. "I can be alone with you here."

There was nothing he could say. There was _everything_ to say, but he couldn't quite find the words. So instead he gathered her in his arms and cuddled her close, her back to his front, and watched the sky change colors with her.

"I'm sorry," she whispered eventually. "I shouldn't have...not like that. I should have told you what I needed before I left."

Spike tensed. He tried not to show it in his body language, but he knew that Buffy was aware of it. "Wish you had," he said gruffly. "So you found it, then? What you needed?"

She didn't answer, but turned to face him slightly, reaching one hand down to play with his bare toes. "It was bad, what happened in Cleveland."

He nodded, remembering the sounds of the Slayers screaming as the supernatural fire had rushed across the cavern. A handful of them had died immediately, a few more lingering for weeks before finally succumbing to their injuries. Even Slayer healing hadn't been enough to save them. "I remember," he said.

"I was there," Buffy whispered. "I was there, and I _lived_ and I couldn't do anything to help them. I watched them burn. Do you know how much I _hate_ watching people burn? God, I thought you were dead too." She reached up and wiped her eyes with one shaky hand. "They were all so young. Meg...Shiri...Hannah...do you remember Hannah? The little one with the round face? She was so small when she came to us."

Spike nodded and squeezed her tighter, one hand coming up to brush gently at her tears.

"At first, I tried to hold myself back," Buffy said in a low voice. "I tried to keep from caring about them too much. I knew that not all of them would make it, all these new Slayers, and I thought...I thought I wouldn't be able to do my job if I got too close to them." She shrugged and tried to smile. "I knew that wasn't the right thing to do. I already knew it."

"You've always known it," Spike murmured. "It's what keeps you in the world."

Buffy gave a bitter laugh. "Oh, yeah. And it seemed like it was my new duty, you know? To care for them, to guide them, even to love them. They were my new family. And it hurt so badly whenever one of them died, but I took that hurt and held onto it." She gave a shaky sigh. "It was what I deserved."

Spike pulled back slightly to look at her face. "Buffy," he said slowly, "you don't deserve to hurt like that."

"I thought I did," Buffy said calmly, staring at the ocean and seemingly oblivious to the tears running down her face. "Because it was ultimately my fault that they died. It was my decision to change the rules back in Sunnydale and call them all to be Slayers. And so it seemed fair that I should make myself be close to them just so that I _could_ hurt."

"Love as penance," Spike whispered hollowly. "Oh, Buffy...." He gathered her close again, and she curled up in his lap and buried her face in his shoulder.

"But I know now that that's not right either," she said, her breath warm and moist against his neck. "Because love isn't pain, and it's not supposed to hurt like that. It's _not_ what I deserve. It's a gift. It's _my_ gift." She raised her head and looked at him, her eyes shining in the dim light of the early evening. "I needed to be by myself to see it, but...you helped teach me that."

He couldn't take it anymore, so with a moan he grabbed her arms and drew her even closer to him. She sighed into his open mouth and drank him in greedily, her hands clasping his face and running over the tops of his ears. And oh, how he'd missed this, this soul-deep kissing that made his lips tingle and his bones shake. He rearranged Buffy so that she was straddling his lab, his hands kneading her sides and running up and down the smooth skin of her back.

Her body still burned with the heat of the sun she'd been soaking in all day, and he held her closer to take that warmth into himself. Her shoulders and the tops of her breasts had been tinged pink, and she hissed softly as he brushed a line of soft kisses across her skin. She tasted of salt and sunshine, her body burning his with a feverish warmth. With a quick flip of his wrist, her bikini top dropped to the floor and his mouth found her nipples.

"Spike," she crooned, running her fingers through his hair and squeezing his sides with her knees. He suckled her with a hungry grunt, his fingers digging into her hips and holding her tightly against him as she squirmed in his lap. He couldn't stop touching her after so long apart, and it was only reluctantly that he disengaged long enough to pull his shirt over his head and remove his pants. He was almost shaking in anticipation by the time she settled back onto his lap, the bikini bottoms gone but the sarong still hugging her narrow hips. He wanted to take it slow, to reclaim all of the time they had lost, but he honestly didn't think he'd be able to wait much longer.

Luckily, Buffy seemed to be in the same mood, and with a heavy-lidded smile she took hold of him and took him inside her. Her eyes dropped shut and she leaned her head forward, her mouth catching on his and breathing life into his dead body. As his hands crept underneath the sarong and cupped her ass, they rocked together fluidly. Buffy rubbed her nipples against his chest, slick and sweaty in the humid air, and shifted her position slightly to rub her clit against his pelvis with every downward grind. The sound of the sea receded, swallowed up by an undercurrent of quick pants and little moans. He lasted only long enough to feel her muscles clench around him before he was coming inside of her.

Time passed, and they cuddled together on the linen-covered mat as the sky turned black and the stars came out.

"Thank you for coming," Buffy whispered.

Spike smiled. "Always do," he said ruefully. "You can't get rid of me that easily."

"Good," she said with a yawn, rubbing her nose against his. "We should be careful not to sleep too long. Private beaches are of the good, but I don't want us to get caught here when the sun comes up."

"We'll manage," he said easily. "So, tell me: any more epiphanies I should know about? Any more psychotherapy we need to be doing?"

"No," she muttered, slapping his arm. "I'm all epiphanied out, thank you very much."

"Suits me," Spike said, rolling them over until Buffy was on the bottom and he could just see the shape of her face in the dark. "Because...what do you say we continue your little getaway?"

"With less angst and more sex, I take it?" Buffy said dryly. She let out rich laugh that rumbled through Spike's body, and he couldn't help but laugh in return. He settled back down next to her, drawing her into his arms and pressing a kiss to her forehead.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

Buffy tightened her fingers around his, bringing his hand to her mouth for a kiss.

"I feel alive."


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

_So with my eyes I traced the line_  
 _Of the horizon, thin and fine,_  
 _Straight around till I was come_  
 _Back to where I'd started from_

January, 2021

Sunnydale, California

 

Buffy waited until several months after the funeral to take care of what needed to be done. She kept telling herself that it wasn't a good time to get away, that she had too much to do, that she could put this off for a few days/months/years and it wouldn't matter.

But she knew that the real reason was that she wasn't ready to say goodbye.

The rented jeep bumped over the dusty road that had once led to a small town. It wasn't a memorable place -- the rest of the country had almost forgotten it ever existed -- but it was her everything. It was the place where she had loved and lost, and died and risen again.

No matter where else she went, no matter how much time had passed, this place would always be her home.

It was easy to avoid the two small seismic monitoring stations that had been set up at the perimeter of the crater that encompassed the boundaries of the town -- set up in the hopes of finding the fault line that had triggered the original collapse. They found nothing, of course, and after a number of years the stations were abandoned. The only things to call this place home were the snakes and coyotes, and the dusty winds which blew in from the desert.

There were plenty of cautionary signs set up near the roadway warning of unstable surfaces, but Buffy plowed grimly on. She, better than anyone, knew the danger this town represented, even if it was only a faint echo of what it once was. The Hellmouth slumbered, but she knew better by now than to say it could never reawaken.

She stopped and set the emergency brake about fifty feet from the edge of the ravine, knowing it would be safer to walk the rest of the way. Taking a deep breath, she unlocked the door, placed her hands on the steering wheel...and didn't move. She blinked when a hand covered hers and squeezed softly.

"Need to take a bit of time?"

She shook her head stubbornly, blinking to try to clear the film of tears that refused to go away. "I'm good." Turning her head, she smiled. "Thanks for being here with me."

Spike smiled at her in return. "Always."

The wind blew cold and dry at this time of night, and the grit of sand stung Buffy's eyes. She'd left the jeep engine on so the headlights could illuminate the rest of their path. It only seemed a few steps before the edge of the canyon yawned before her, too wide and deep to see the end of it. If she looked closely, she thought she could imagine a few familiar shapes in the bits of rubble that lay below the nearest edge -- a few bricks, some pipes, the rusted end of a car that lay half buried in the debris. She had no idea where in that vast blackness her house once was.

Reaching into her coat pocket, Buffy drew out a small decorative urn that had been sealed shut. It was time to say goodbye.

It was so stupid, really. She'd thought that after all of the apocalypses, after all of the chaos and destruction, she'd be ready for this to happen. As it turned out, she really wasn't.

It didn't seem fair to Buffy that her sister, one of the bravest people she'd ever known, could lose her life in something so ordinary as a car accident.

It had happened quickly, the doctors had said, which was some small grace. For all of her former Keyness, she was as fragile as any human, and just as breakable. She had no Slayer healing, no supernatural reflexes to save her from hurt. She left behind a husband and a circle of friends to mourn her, none of whom were prepared for the shock of her sudden death.

Buffy turned the urn over in her hands, drawing a deep breath when Spike placed his hand at the small of her back to steady her.

"You sure?" he asked quietly. "You don't have to do this now."

Buffy nodded quickly. "I'm sure. She wanted this. She told me that if...that if something ever happened, she wanted to be here." Her voice cracked and her face crumpled, but she swallowed hard around the tightness in her throat. "She said she didn't want Mom to be all alone."

Spike nodded and stepped back, but Buffy could still feel his presence behind her, for which she was utterly grateful. Taking a deep breath, she unsealed the urn, pointed herself as best she could toward the center of what had once been Sunnydale, and scattered the ashes to the desert winds. Somewhere out there was the remains of her mother's grave. The crater would now be the final resting place for both of them. "Bye, Dawnie," she whispered.

She and Spike ended up sitting on the edge of the crater for a long while, listening to the sound of the night winds over the hum of the jeep motor. She curled up next to him in companionable silence, his arm around her and shielding her from the chill, her hand on his.

"Spike," she said quietly after a long moment, "would you...for me? When something happens?"

Spike's arm tightened around her, but he didn't voice the immediate objection she'd half been expecting. And she was glad for that, because she wasn't up for a debate about her ultimate mortality.

Her poor vampire was growing up.

"Yes," he said finally. "If that's what you want."

It still amazed her, his presence in her life. How did he do it? How did he go through every day aware of what he would one day lose? Because, barring violent death, he was certain to lose her eventually. He used to fight her whenever she mentioned growing older or dying, but over the past few years he seemed to have come to terms with it.

It was one thing to accept a quick death in battle, and quite another to deal with the long, slow separation that the passage of time brought. Because he had chosen to be a part of her life, he was surrounded by the terminal disease that was mortality. In her more maudlin moments, she sometimes wondered what would happen to him after she had gone. Who would care for him in her place, and bring his ashes to rest? It would hurt her to leave him, but it hurt her more to think of him staying behind by himself. Was this the way that her mother had thought about her and Dawn when she lay in the hospital bed?

Turning her head, Buffy drew him into a short, bittersweet kiss. "My love," she whispered. She'd never really been one for pretty language and sweet talk -- that was Spike's department -- but he didn't mind at all as long as she called him that.

He answered her kiss, caressing her face briefly. "Love you," he said. "Always." He gently took the urn from her and studied her carefully. "Ready?"

"Yes," she said, standing and taking his arm.

Turning her back on the remains of Sunnydale, she let Spike lead her back to the land of the living.

 

_The world stands out on either side_  
 _No wider than the heart is wide;_  
 _Above the world is stretched the sky, --_  
 _No higher than the soul is high._  
 _The heart can push the sea and land_  
 _Farther away on either hand;_  
 _The soul can split the sky in two,_  
 _And let the face of God shine through._


End file.
